Perceived organizational support: Inferior versus superior performance by wary employees

Retail employees in Study 1 and employees from multiple organizations in St udy 2 completed a questionnaire investigating the moderating effect of perc eived organizational support (POS) on the relationship of employees' fear o f exploitation in exchange relationships (reciprocation wariness) and their in-role and extra-role job performance. When POS was low, reciprocation wa riness was negatively related to in-role and extra-role job performance. Wi th high POS, reciprocation wariness was positively related to extra-role pe rformance and either positively related to in-role performance (for retail employees) or showed no reliable relationship with in-role performance (for the multiorganizational sample). In deciding on their work effort, recipro cation-wary employees considered how much the organization values their con tributions and cares about their well-being. Implications for employee-empl oyer exchange relationships and workforce cynicism are discussed.